Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

A Christian couple were allegedly burned alive in an industrial kiln in Pakistan on Tuesday after angry workers discovered they had set fire to several verses of the Quran, a local activist said. Shahbaz Maseeh, 26, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were attacked by colleagues at the brick factory where they worked in Punjab province, according to Mushtaq Gill, chief advocate at Pakistani minority rights group LEAD. He said they had planned to flee their town with their three young children.

“A mob of several dozen attacked the building where they were, ” said Gill, whose organization’s full name is the Legal Evangelical Association Development. “They broke their legs so they couldn’t run and then threw them in the fire. Only some bones and hair were found at the site.” Punjab province is home to the majority of Pakistan’s around four million Christians. Gill said that word got out over the weekend that several verses of the Quran were among items burnt by Bibi after they were left behind by her deceased father. Setting fire to the religious text is considered blasphemy in Pakistan. While technically punishable by death under strict Islamic law, it is more common for vigilante mobs to take matters into their own hands. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a police official told NBC News up to 35 people were believed to be involved in the attack and that arrests were under way.

I do not think the murderers will be arrested, or even if they are arrested, they will definitely be freed quickly.
Muslims can slaughter and burn people alive for Islam. Islam is the only religion exists in today’s world in whose name Muslims can commit all kinds of heinous crimes against humanity and still can roam around freely.

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A couple was beheaded in cold blood by the family of the girl over love marriage in Satrah village, on Friday.

According to the FIR lodged with Satrah police station, Sajjad Ahmed, 27, of village Hasanabad, Sialkot, had contracted a love marriage with Muafia Bibi, 23, of Satrah on June 18.

On Friday, seven members of Muafia’s family, including her father Dilshad alias Kulla, uncle Ghulam Husain, Shamshad, Afzaal Husain and Bashiran Bibi, stormed into house of the newly-weds in Hasanabad, bundled them into a van and took them to an outhouse at Satrah.

The suspects tied up the legs and arms of Sajjad and Muafia and cut off their heads with choppers in public but nobody dared stop them.

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Ten Muslim terrorists attacked karachi airport. Twenty eight people were killed including those terrorists. Terrorists disguised themselves as security guards. What if they disguise as security guards and enter the place where nuclear weapons are? What if they switch on the button of those hundreds of nukes? Terrorists can disguise themselves as nuclear scientists. Or maybe they don’t really need to disguise! Scientists who made nuclear weapons for Pakistan were close friends of the Taliban and al Qaeda. During Taliban regime they visited Afghanistan many times and planned to make nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for al Qaeda. They even met Osama Bin Laden. They said, ‘Pakistan’s nuclear bombs belong to whole Muslim ummah.’ Here is the story.
Bashir Uddin mahmood, the jehadi nuclear scientist is now writing books about the relation between science and the Koran.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous. An accident can occur at any moment. No country should have nukes. We are worried about two countries for having nukes. North Korea is ruled by an autocrat, mad man. Pakistan is ruled by people surrounded by religious fanatics. Don’t know who will blow up our planet first.

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Farzana Parveen, 25, was killed in Lahore by her family members last month because she married a man against her family wish.

Pakistani police officers will be investigated because they didn’t intervene when Parveen was publicly beaten to death with bricks.

Such killings often originate from tribal traditions in Pakistan and usually happen in rural areas, not large cities such as Lahore. Human rights activists said bystanders, including police, often don’t intervene because the killings are considered family matters.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 869 women were victims of honor killing last year in the nation of about 180 million people. The actual number is of course much higher.

Nothing is easier in this world than killing women.
Farzana’s husband said he killed his first wife in order to marry Farzana. If Farzana were not killed by her father and uncles, she would have been killed by her husband. The man who is able to kill his first wife, is able to kill his second wife.

Farzana would not have enjoyed her life if she were alive because she was a woman. Millions of Farzanas get killed for being women. Men’s misogynistic mindset is responsible for the suffering of women. Misogynistic mindset will continue to remain until men collectively get rid of it. I do not think they will ever stop hating women. Or may be they will. But sure not in our lifetime.

The science book had material that could provoke “sexual desire”, which could not be tolerated, he said.

“We will not allow anyone to teach our children with material which is against our social values and religious beliefs,” Ahmad said.

An inquiry was underway to ascertain why “objectionable” contents were included in the science book, he said.

The Punjab government also took cognizance of the same school’s decision to replace Islamic Studies, a compulsory subject, with Religious Studies in Grade VI.

“The new subject contains material which may mislead and confuse the minds of children,” Ahmad said.

“Article 25 of the Constitution of Pakistan is quite clear about the provision that no Pakistani citizen should be taught a religion other than his own religion – Islam,” Ahmad said.

The authorities of a country where hating and killing in the name of almost anything is a norm are afraid of people having sexual desire! It is always better to make love than to make war. Isn’t it?

If they don’t allow their children to learn anything which is against their social values and religious beliefs, they will not let them learn science and feminism because science is against religion and feminism is against patriarchal social values.

They prefer to teach their children religion. Then what happened? Most of the children become religious fundamentalists or religious terrorists.

A five-year-old girl was brutally raped in Lahore on Thursday and was found dumped outside Ganga Ram Hospital around 8 pm on Friday. The very next day a 12-year-old girl in Faisalabad and another first year student in Toba Tek Singh were gang raped. This was followed by another gang rape of a 15-year-old girl yesterday in Tharparkar. Last year 7,516 cases of violence against women were reported in Pakistan with 822 of them being rape cases. And anyone who’s familiar with the perverted concept of ‘honour’ in our country knows that 822 is a sorry fraction of the actual number.

Every individual who propagates the deplorable myth that women are inherently dependent on or weaker than men is a rape accomplice. Every person who scorns at a girl for not catering to their definition of decency is a rape accomplice. Anyone who is a flag-bearer of double standards of modesty for men and women is a rape accomplice. Everyone who teaches women to be ashamed of their bodies is a rape accomplice. And if your respect for a woman is dependent on how well covered her body is, then you sir/ma’am, are a rape accomplice as well.

An accomplice is ‘a person who helps another commit a crime’. And while most of us won’t directly provide a rapist the aid that he needs to commit his monstrous crime, by propagating the aforementioned ideals we definitely help him unleash the loathsome ‘beast’ inside him.

Answer this: who would have more of a tendency towards rape, a man who’s told that a woman not dressed up in synchrony with (insert any cultural/social/religious/individual standard of modesty) is dishonourable, or a man who’s told that how a woman chooses to dress up should be no one else’s concern, regardless of whether she’s wearing a burqa or a bikini?

Now answer this: who would have more inclination towards physically abusing a ‘party girl’ who’s drunk and has ‘many male friends’, a man who’s taught that women must follow a different set of morals as compared to men, or a man who’s taught gender equality in every single aspect of life?

And finally answer this: who has more of a chance to become a rapist, a man who lives in a society where a woman’s respect has got nothing to do with her body or a man who lives in a society where a woman not following a certain ‘dress code’ is dubbed an open lollipop inviting flies and insects?

A woman not covering her head isn’t ‘asking for it’; one wearing a bikini isn’t ‘asking for it’ and yes, one who might not be wearing anything at all is still not ‘asking for it’. Those that justify rape under any circumstance omenshouldn’t merely be dubbed rape apologists but should instead be called rape accomplices and should share a fraction of guilt for every rape where the victim was ostensibly ‘asking for it’.

The myth that the hijab, burqa, or following a particular definition of modesty protects women is busted by the fact that in a recent BBC report it was revealed that 99.3 per cent of Egyptian women had experienced harassment, while the rate of sexual offenses in Saudi Arabia is 58.6 per 100,000 and Qatar and UAE have rates of 1.7 reported cases of rape per 100,000 population. Also, when 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds are being raped, it’s obviously not a case of what’s atop the woman’s head, more a case of what’s inside the man’s head. And those who want to flaunt the fact that forcing a woman to wear the hijab reduces the chances of her being raped, should know that those chances would be further reduced if you lock her up in a cupboard and throw away the key.

Rape cannot be prevented by forcing women to cover up, it can only be prevented by women empowerment, promotion of gender equality and the eradication of antediluvian myths that teach us how women are men’s property who must keep a watch on them and control them. When it is stated or implied that women are men’s property and that the latter have an upper-hand over the former, you’re cultivating a ground for rapists to grow. And everyone who plays even the most minor of roles in the cultivation should be called a rape accomplice.

Not only are we all rape accomplices because we promote the aforementioned ideals, but our law is quite possibly the grandest of all rape accomplices, since it doesn’t consider DNA as primary evidence in rape cases in the year 2013 AD. Furthermore, by asking for four witnesses – who can only be dubbed the closest of collaborators, since they preferred watching a woman being abused than preventing the act – it’s almost as if we’ve created a social and judicial setup to facilitate rapists.

Merely screaming bloody murder over a heinous act won’t suffice in its eradication, and propagating the West’s rape statistics won’t particularly help the cause in our neck of the woods, where rape is criminally misreported and prevails despite us purging our society from ‘Western evils’. To actually reduce rape, every single one of us must ask ourselves if we’ve ever, intentionally or inadvertently, promoted misogynistic ideals or tried to justify rape under any circumstances. If the answer to those questions is in the affirmative, we’ve all played a part in the physical and mental trauma of every raped woman in our society.

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India got independence from the British in 1947. But the independence brought the partition, based on religion. Pakistan was for Muslims. India was for Hindus. The political leaders of India believed in two nation theory. But the war between East and West Pakistan in 1971 proved that two nation theory was a wrong theory and Muslim unity was a myth. The leaders thought that the conflicts people had would be solved if only they could divide the land where people lived for thousands of years together. But they were wrong. A million people died during the partition. Hatred increased over the years. Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism grew more than ever. And after 66 years of the partition, now we see that India and Pakistan get nuclear bombs, Indians are in constant fear of Pakistani terrorists, Pakistanis are getting killed by talibans and drone attacks, Bangladesh’s secular fabric has been destroyed by the Islamists.

If there were no partition of India, there would not have any war in Bangladesh. 3 million people would not have been killed, and 200,000 women would not have been raped.
Today I am celebrating Independence Day of India by reciting ‘September on Jessore Road’, the poem written by Allen Ginsberg while remembering all the deaths and the homelessness of Bengalis.